Landscape rocks and boulders have long been used as in landscaping to provide a natural effect and to highlight certain areas. To use actual boulders, it is necessary to find suitably shaped boulders, transport them to the location to be used and then dig the ground around the boulder such that it rests within the ground at a suitable height. This process is obviously time consuming and burdensome. A variety of alternatives to natural boulders have been developed.
Contemporary landscape architects utilize artificial boulders, which are actually hollowed out boulder liners or shells, having a bottom portion cut off to fit flush on the ground. Such liners are typically formed of concrete which is formed from a mold. The mold, in turn, is formed from an actual boulder which has been selected for its size, shape and design characteristics. By varying the composition or surface treatment of the boulder liner, different colors or surface characteristics can be obtained.
Though contemporary landscape boulder liners have significant functional and economic advantages over actual boulders, the current processes for forming such landscape boulders suffer significant shortcomings which impede both production rate and the quality of the resulting landscape boulders. The quality of such landscape boulders may be measured by how closely the surface of the landscape boulder reflects the surface details of the actual boulder used in the formation process.
Contemporary processes for forming landscape boulders typically use fiberglass molds made by forming a latex skin on the surface of the actual boulder, and then constructing the fiberglass mold around the latex skin. Cement is pumped or hand troweled into the inverted fiberglass mold and allowed to set. The only force acting on the cement is its own weight. By the action of gravity, the cement generally moves downward toward the bottom of the mold, i.e., representing the upper portion of the landscape boulder when the process is complete. Consequently, the resulting product typically does not assume all surface characteristics of the mold. This deficiency is particularly significant in the upper and side portions of the inverted landscape boulder. In order to remedy the deficiencies of the product formed by such processes, it is typically necessary to apply additional cement by hand to the lower outside portions of the completed landscape boulder, resulting in the addition of non-repeating detail which is only vaguely reminiscent of the initial boulder. As will be evident from the above description, such contemporary processes have significant deficiencies with respect to both the quality of the resulting product and the production rate. The present invention addresses these and other deficiencies in the prior art as set forth below.